outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

242.355 cases of COVID in Chile, overtaking Italy's tally of 238.499. Cases per million sees Chile as the world's highest. This makes Santiago, where the majority of the country's cases are concentrated, a global epicenter of virus contagion.
It's going to a be a long winter. pic.twitter.com/pmuhVZa6LF

— Charis McGowan (@charis_mcgowan) June 21, 2020

Seems bad:

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-germanys-r-number-rockets-again-from-179-to-288-12012143🕸

Germany's coronavirus R number has leapt again - from 1.79 on Saturday to 2.88 on Sunday, official figures show.

The Robert Koch Institute for public health (RKI), which has been publishing the country's COVID-19 statistics, said the new number is based on a four-day average. On Friday it was 1.06.

USA fatalities today were the lowest since March 23rd.

looking at the worldometer site it's interesting that the number of new cases per day is fairly steady but the number of deaths keeps falling

Interesting, but not well-explained by any known factors, such as improved treatments or viral mutation toward a lesser lethality, so it just sits there as an isolated 'fact' that could just be an artifact of reporting and tabulation methods.

It's so fun that we still have so little certainty this far into the pandemic. Lotsa shrugs!

there are just so many variables

Wonder if the proportion of cases vs. people suffering more than mild symptoms is also down

I've been watching it, according to worldometer the number of serious/critical cases in the US has gone down, but only slightly so far, from 17,000+ cases to 16,000+ cases

so the number of cases vs people getting really sick seems way down

ppl can get sicker

I think the assumption is that the you explain rising cases and falling deaths with two things:

1. The average age of newly infected people is going down because younger people are the first to emerge from lockdown. And young people are less likely to die if they get it.

2. Deaths lag infections by a couple of weeks, so deaths may go back up in future (but 1 may reduce this effect).

seems right

Apropos reading for those curious about the seasonality of viruses:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/why-do-dozens-diseases-wax-and-wane-seasons-and-will-covid-19

Lipid-enveloped viruses (such as COVID-19) tend to wane in hotter, drier months. Which also explains why the focus was on hand-washing in the early stages of the response (which answers a question I asked wayyy upthread about the seemingly overnight pivot from hand-washing to mask-wearing).

interesting, thank you for linking that article Albert

Any reason why there are no new numbers from Sweden in the past four days? Seems to have stopped updating everywhere I've looked.

They all died

Victoria is having a minor freak out after we have a surge to 73 cases in 4 days. Lines at testing stations, more masks visible, Woolworths going back to having someone at the entrance making people using hand sanitiser and a slow down and roll back of reopening.

Which is good because Saturday looked like a normal pre pandemic day on the high st, aside from a bit of non-physical distanced queuing.

Seems like the surge was caused, in part by people assuming the rules didn’t apply to them, large family gatherings, people breaking quarantine. Also by people working when they should be isolating, the state gov put in a hardship payment for people who have to isolate and don’t have sick leave but it’s seems extraordinary that this didn’t happen already. Getting increasingly concerned that we are about to fuck this all up here.

California has set another record for coronavirus cases with more than 5,000 reported infections on Monday, according to Washington Post data. Its previous high, 4,515, was recorded Sunday.

The Golden State is also facing a spike in hospitalizations, which crept up to 5,065 from the more than 3,700 reported Sunday.

yikes.
3,700 --> 5,065 hospitalizations, overnight, is not "creeping up". that's alarming.

for comparison, here are the hospitalizations and ICUs for Illinois:

https://i.imgur.com/9A7z3Zb.png

it took illinois about 3 weeks to get from 3700 to 5000 hospitalizations, and that was back in late April, a couple weeks before the deaths started peaking

in other news:

The Trump administration is ending funding and support for local COVID-19 testing sites around the country this month, as cases and hospitalizations are skyrocketing in many states.

The federal government will stop providing money and support for 13 sites across five states which were originally set up in the first months of the pandemic to speed up testing at the local level.

Local officials and public health experts expressed a mixture of frustration, resignation, and horror at the decision to let federal support lapse.

...As the pandemic began to batter the United States in March, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency began to deploy Community-Based Testing Sites around the country.

The sites provide testing kits and laboratories, and notify patients of their results. The federal government covers costs, while providing staff and signing its own contracts with third-party vendors.

The Trump administration previously attempted to end support for the testing sites running under the same program in early April. The government reversed the move after a public outcry, extending the sites. The extension is now coming to an end.

Out of a starting number of 41 sites, 13 remain in operation across five states. In addition to Texas’ seven, Illinois and New Jersey each have two, while Colorado and Pennsylvania each have one.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/exclusive-feds-about-to-bail-on-supporting-covid-testing-sites-in-texas-and-other-states

It's all just a joke, hahahahahahahahahahaha

One day, we'll see, one day it will all go away like magic!

We will all be magically relieved of our lives

Fuck. I've been keeping a low profile and trusting that I haven't caught it, but I need to get a test soon before I travel and I heard the sites are starting to throttle who can get one because of decreasing availability.

“the flu”

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2645529/?utm_source=embed&fbclid=IwAR1uOsjF26w23XnKjIp_CXFbM1NAso6SVVKN8TFn7kuZ8e1SOXy_oRhchjU

go easy, sic

lol busted!

Please sic don’t hurt ‘im!

i imagine sic to be sifting through those URLs like the guy in Pi examines the stock market, looking for patterns and secrets

i secretly love it, i’m a pervert

so was the guy in Pi, iirc (not really, but it adds a fun undercurrent to the movie)

sic?

https://www.pinterest.com/mitchelljjohnso/sic-knives/?utm_source=embed&fbclid=IwAR1uOsjF26w23XnKjIp_CXFbM1NAso6SVVKN8TFn7kuZ8e1SOXy_oRhchjU

the sic-nal has been activated

https://i.imgur.com/9OPiETA.jpg

hahaha

A+++

pmsl

incredible

*applause*

:)

just so it's clear, i love sic's thing with those URLs

he doesn't even have to do it anymore

lmao karl

WE'RE DOING IT FOR HIM

xp exactly, it was a really successful effort!

i am sic-partacus

The Trump admin. plans to end federal funding and support for coronavirus testing sites at the end of this month,
@NBCNews
has learned.

smart

The level of proud, willful ignorance among Trump and the CHUDs is truly staggering.